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By George Meredith
BOOK 6.
CHAPTER XXXIX
My father stood in the lobby of the Opera, holding a sort of open court,
it appeared to me, for a cluster of gentlemen hung round him; and I had
presently to bow to greetings which were rather of a kind to flatter me,
leading me to presume that he was respected as well as marvelled at.
The names of Mr. Serjeant Wedderburn, Mr. Jennings, Lord Alton,
Sir Weeton Slater, Mr. Monterez Williams, Admiral Loftus, the Earl of
Witlington, were among those which struck my ear, and struck me as good
ones. I could not perceive anything of the air of cynical satellites in
these gentlemen--on the contrary, they were cordially deferential. I
felt that he was encompassed by undoubted gentlemen, and my warmer
feelings to my father returned when I became sensible of the pleasant
sway he held over the circle, both in speaking and listening. His
sympathetic smile and semi-droop of attention; his readiness, when
occasion demanded it, to hit the key of the subject and help it on with
the right word; his air of unobtrusive appreciation; his sensibility to
the moment when the run of conversation depended upon him--showed
inimitable art coming of natural genius; and he did not lose a shade of
his superior manner the while. Mr. Serjeant Wedderburn, professionally
voluble, a lively talker, brimming with anecdote, but too sparkling,
too prompt, too full of personal relish of his point, threw my father's
urbane supremacy into marked relief; and so in another fashion did the
Earl of Witlington, 'a youth in the season of guffaws,' as Jorian DeWitt
described him, whom a jest would seize by the throat, shaking his sapling
frame. Jorian strolled up to us goutily. No efforts of my father's
would induce him to illustrate his fame for repartee, so it remained
established. 'Very pretty waxwork,' he said to me of our English
beauties swimming by. 'Now, those women, young Richmond, if they were
inflammable to the fiftieth degree, that is, if they had the fiftieth
part of a Frenchwoman in them, would have canvassed society on the great
man's account long before this, and sent him to the top like a bubble.
He wastes his time on them. That fat woman he's bowing to is Viscountess
Sedley, a porcine empress, widow of three, with a soupcon of bigamy to
flavour them. She mounted from a grocer's shop, I am told. Constitution
has done everything for that woman. So it will everywhere--it beats the
world! Now he's on all-fours to Lady Rachel Stokes, our pure
aristocracy; she walks as if she were going through a doorway, and
couldn't risk an eyelid. I 'd like to see her tempting St. Anthony.
That's little Wreckham's wife: she's had as many adventures as Gil Blas
before he entered the Duke of Lerma's service.' He reviewed several
ladies, certainly not very witty when malignant, as I remembered my
father to have said of him. 'The style of your Englishwoman is to keep
the nose exactly at one elevation, to show you're born to it. They
daren't run a gamut, these women. These Englishwomen are a fiction! The
model of them is the nursery-miss, but they're like the names of true
lovers cut on the bark of a tree--awfully stiff and longitudinal with the
advance of time. We've our Lady Jezebels, my boy! They're in the pay of
the bishops, or the police, to make vice hideous. The rest do the same
for virtue, and get their pay for it somewhere, I don't doubt; perhaps
from the newspapers, to keep up the fiction. I tell you, these
Englishwomen have either no life at all in them, or they're nothing but
animal life. 'Gad, how they dizen themselves! They've no other use for
their fingers. The wealth of this country's frightful!'
'So,' said she at once, speaking German, 'you are to marry the romantic
head, the Princess Ottilia of Eppenwelzen! I know her well. I have met
her in Vienna. Schone Seele, and bas bleu! It's just those that are won
with a duel. I know Prince Otto too.' She prattled away, and asked me
whether the marriage was to take place in the Summer. I was too
astounded to answer.
Here she dramatized the circulation of the gossip. 'Have you heard the
news? No, what? Fitz-George's son marries a princess of the German
realm. Indeed! True as gospel. And how soon? In a month; and now you
will see the dear, neglected man command the Court . . . .'
'If it were not,' said he, 'for the Chassediane--you are aware, Richie,
poor Jorian is lost to her?--he has fallen at her quicksilver feet.
She is now in London. Half the poor fellow's income expended in
bouquets! Her portrait, in the character of the widow Lefourbe, has
become a part of his dressing apparatus; he shaves fronting her playbill.
His first real affaire de coeur, and he is forty-five! So he is taken in
the stomach. That is why love is such a dangerous malady for middle age.
As I said, but for Jenny Chassediane, our Sampleman would be the fortune
for Jorian. I have hinted it on both sides. Women, Richie, are cleverer
than the illustrious Lord Nelson in not seeing what their inclinations
decline to see, and Jorian would do me any service in the world except
that one. You are restless, my son?'
I begged permission to quit the house, and wait for him outside. He, in
return, begged me most urgently to allow myself to be introduced to Lady
Edbury, the stepmother of Lord Destrier, now Marquis of Edbury; and,
using conversational pressure, he adjured me not to slight this lady,
adding, with more significance than the words conveyed, 'I am taking the
tide, Richie.' The tide took me, and I bowed to a lady of impressive
languor, pale and young, with pleasant manners, showing her character
in outline, like a glove on the hand, but little of its quality. She
accused my father of coming direct from 'that person's' box. He replied
that he never forsook old friends. 'You should,' was her rejoinder.
It suggested to me an image of one of the sister Fates cutting a thread.
My heart sank when, from Lady Edbury too, I heard the allusion to Germany
and its princess. 'Some one told me she was dark?'
'A complexion?'
Lady Edbury threw a flying glance in a mirror: 'The unrighteous you leave
to us then?'
She asked the name of the lady whose box I had quitted, and after
bending her opera-glass on it for a moment, said, with a certain air of
satisfaction, 'She is young'; which led me to guess that Lady Edbury was
reputed to be Anna's successor; but why the latter should be flattered by
the former's youth was one of the mysteries for me then. Her aunt was
awakened from sleep by the mention of my name. 'Is the man here?' she
exclaimed, starting. Anna smiled, and talked to me of my father, saying,
that she was glad to see me at his right hand, for he had a hard battle
to fight. She spoke of him with affectionate interest in his fortunes;
no better proof of his generosity as well as hers could have been given
me. I promised her heartily I would not be guilty of letting our
intimacy drop, and handed the ladies down to the crush-room, where I saw
my father leading Lady Edbury to her carriage, much observed. Destrier,
the young marquis, coming in to meet the procession from other haunts,
linked his arm to his friend Witlington's, and said something in my
hearing of old 'Duke Fitz,' which provoked, I fancied, signs of amusement
equivalent to tittering in a small ring of the select assembly. Lady
Sampleman's carriage was called. 'Another victim,' said a voice. Anna
Penrhys walked straight out to find her footman and carriage for herself.
'He prefers to meet you at Bulsted. Captain Bulsted offers his house for
the purpose. I have to warn you, sir, that we stand in a very
exceptional position. The squire insists upon having a full account
of the money rendered to him.'
'I invite him to London, Richie. I refer him to Dettermain and Newson.
I request him to compute the value of a princess.'
'But you must know that he sets his face against legal proceedings
involving exposure.'
'But surely, Richie, exposure is the very thing we court. The innocent,
the unjustly treated, court it. We would be talked about; you shall hear
of us! And into the bargain an hereditary princess. Upon my faith, Mr.
Beltham, I think you have mighty little to complain of.'
My temper was beginning to chafe at the curb. 'As regards any feeling
about the money, personally, sir, you know I have none. But I must speak
of one thing. I have heard to-night, I confess with as much astonishment
as grief, the name . . . I could not have guessed that I should hear
the princess's name associated with mine, and quite openly.'
'As a matter of course.' He nodded, and struck out a hand in wavy motion.
'Well, sir, if you can't feel for her or her family, be good enough to
think of me, and remember that I object to it.'
'For you all,' said he, buoyantly; 'I feel for you all, and I will act
for you all. I bring the princess to your arms, my dear boy. You have
written me word that the squire gives her a royal dowry--have you not?
My combinations permit of no escape to any one of you. Nay, 'tis done.
I think for you--I feel for you--I act for you. By heaven, you shall be
happy! Sigh, Richie, sigh; your destiny is now entrusted to me!'
'I daresay I'm wasting my breath, sir, but I protest against false
pretences. You know well that you have made use of the princess's name
for your own purposes.'
'Most indubitably, Richie, I have; and are they not yours? I must have
social authority to succeed in our main enterprise. Possibly the
princess's name serves for a temporary chandelier to cast light on us.
She belongs to us. For her sake, we are bringing the house she enters
into order. Thus, Richie, I could tell Mr. Beltham: you and he supply
the money, the princess the name, and I the energy, the skilfulness, and
the estimable cause. I pay the princess for the use of her name with the
dowry, which is royal; I pay you with the princess, who is royal too; and
I, Richie, am paid by your happiness most royally. Together, it is past
contest that we win.--Here, my little one,' he said to a woman, and
dropped a piece of gold into her hand, 'on condition that you go straight
home.' The woman thanked him and promised. 'As I was observing, we are
in the very tide of success. Curious! I have a slight inclination to
melancholy. Success, quotha? Why, hundreds before us have paced the
identical way homeward at night under these lamps between the mansions
and the park. The bare thought makes them resemble a double line of
undertakers. The tomb is down there at the end of them--costly or not.
At the age of four, on my birthday, I was informed that my mother lay
dead in her bed. I remember to this day my astonishment at her not
moving. "Her heart is broken," my old nurse said. To me she appeared
intact. Her sister took possession of me, and of her papers, and the
wedding-ring--now in the custody of Dettermain and Newson--together with
the portraits of both my parents; and she, poor soul, to sustain me, as I
verily believe--she had a great idea of my never asking unprofitably for
anything in life--bartered the most corroborative of the testificatory
documents, which would now make the establishment of my case a
comparatively light task. Have I never spoken to you of my boyhood? My
maternal uncle was a singing-master and master of elocution. I am
indebted to him for the cultivation of my voice. He taught me an
effective delivery of my sentences. The English of a book of his called
The Speaker is still to my mind a model of elegance. Remittances of
money came to him from an unknown quarter; and, with a break or two, have
come ever since up to this period. My old nurse-heaven bless her--
resumed the occupation of washing. I have stood by her tub, Richie,
blowing bubbles and listening to her prophecies of my exalted fortune for
hours. On my honour, I doubt, I seriously doubt, if I have ever been
happier. I depend just now--I have to avow it to you--slightly upon
stimulants . . . of a perfectly innocuous character. Mrs. Waddy will
allow me a pint of champagne. The truth is, Richie--you see these two or
three poor pensioners of mine, honi soit qui mal y pense--my mother has
had hard names thrown at her. The stones of these streets cry out to me
to have her vindicated. I am not tired; but I want my wine.'
Early in the morning, I found him pacing through the open doors of the
dining-room and the library dictating to a secretary at a desk, now and
then tossing a word to Dettermain and Newson's chief clerk. The floor
was strewn with journals. He wore Hessian boots; a voluminous black
cloak hung loosely from his shoulders.
'I am just settling the evening papers,' he said after greeting me, with
a show of formality in his warmth; and immediately added, 'That will do,
Mr. Jopson. Put in a note--" Mr. Harry Lepel Richmond of Riversley and
Twn-y-glas, my son, takes no step to official distinction in his native
land save through the ordinary Parliamentary channels." Your pardon,
Richie; presently. I am replying to a morning paper.'
And now, turning to me, my father fenced me with the whole weight of his
sententious volubility, which was the force of a river. Why did my name
appear in the papers? Because I was his son. But he assured me that he
carefully separated me from public companionship with his fortunes, and
placed me on the side of my grandfather, as a plain gentleman of England,
the heir of the most colossal wealth possible in the country.
He shook me by both hands. I was touched with pity, and at the same time
in doubt whether it was not an actor that swayed me; for I was
discontented, and could not speak my discontent; I was overborne,
overflowed. His evasion of the matter of my objections relating to the
princess I felt to be a palpable piece of artfulness, but I had to
acknowledge to myself that I knew what his argument would be, and how
overwhelmingly his defence of it would spring forth. My cowardice shrank
from provoking a recurrence to the theme. In fact, I submitted
consciously to his masterful fluency and emotional power, and so I was
carried on the tide with him, remaining in London several days to witness
that I was not the only one. My father, admitting that money served him
in his conquest of society, and defying any other man to do as much with
it as he did, replied to a desperate insinuation of mine, 'This money I
spend I am actually putting out to interest as much as, or more than,
your grandad.' He murmured confidentially, 'I have alarmed the
Government. Indeed, I have warrant for saying I am in communication with
its agents. They are bribing me; they are positively bribing me, Richie.
I receive my stipend annually. They are mighty discreet. So am I. But
I push them hard. I take what they offer: I renounce none of my claims.'
'I am prepared,' my father said. 'I have only to meet Mr. Beltham in a
room--I stipulate that it shall be between square walls--to win him. The
squire to back us, Richie, we have command of the entire world. His
wealth, and my good cause, and your illustrious union--by the way, it is
announced definitely in this morning's paper.'
'Read,' said he. 'This will be something to hand to Mr. Beltham at our
meeting. I might trace it to one of the embassies, Imperial or Royal.
No matter--there it is.'
I read a paragraph in which Ottilia's name and titles were set down; then
followed mine and my wealthy heirship, and--woe was me in the perusing of
it!--a roundabout vindication of me as one not likely to be ranked as the
first of English commoners who had gained the hand of an hereditary
foreign princess, though it was undoubtedly in the light of a commoner
that I was most open to the congratulations of my countrymen upon my
unparalleled felicity. A display of historical erudition cited the noble
inferiors by birth who had caught princesses to their arms--Charles,
Humphrey, William, John. Under this list, a later Harry!
The paragraph closed by fixing the nuptials to take place before the end
of the Season.
I looked at my father to try a struggle with him. The whole man was
efflorescent.
'Things printed can never be stopped, Richie. Our Jorian compares them
to babies baptized. They have a soul from that moment, and go on for
ever!--an admirable word of Jorian's. And a word to you, Richie. Will
you swear to me by the veracity of your lover's heart, that paragraph
affords you no satisfaction? He cannot swear it!' my father exclaimed,
seeing me swing my shoulder round, and he made me feel that it would have
been a false oath if I had sworn it. But I could have sworn, that I had
rather we two were at the bottom of the sea than that it should come
under the princess's eyes. I read it again. It was in print. It looked
like reality. It was at least the realization of my dream. But this
played traitor and accused me of being crowned with no more than a dream.
The sole practical thing I could do was to insist on our starting for
Riversley immediately, to make sure of my own position. 'Name your hour,
Richie,' my father said confidently: and we waited.
'This English climate has bedevilled the fellow! He peppers his dishes
like a mongrel Indian reared on mangoes.'
'Ring him up, ring him up, Jorian. All I beg of you is not to disgust
him with life, for he quits any service in the world to come to me, and,
in fact, he suits me.'
My father shrugged. 'The state of the case is, that your stomach is
growing delicate, friend Jorian.'
'The actual state of the case being, that my palate was never keener, and
consequently my stomach knows its business.'
'You should have tried the cold turbot with oil and capers.'
'Say, porridge!'
'With this difference,' cried Jorian in a heat, 'that he would never have
allowed the thought of any of your barbarous messes to occur to a man at
table. Let me tell you, Roy, you astonish me: up till now I have never
known you guilty of the bad taste of defending a bad dish on your own
board.'
'Oh, I pardon you,' Jorian sneered, tripped to the carpet by such ignoble
mildness. 'A breakfast is no great loss.'
Jorian threw back his head as though to discharge a spiteful sarcasm with
good aim; but turning to me, said, 'Harry, the thing must be done; your
father must marry. Notoriety is the season for a pick and choice of the
wealthiest and the loveliest. I refuse to act the part of warming-pan
any longer; I refuse point blank. It's not a personal feeling on my
part; my advice is that of a disinterested friend, and I tell you
candidly, Roy, set aside the absurd exhibition of my dancing attendance
on that last rose of Guildhall,--egad, the alderman went like Summer, and
left us the very picture of a fruity Autumn,--I say you can't keep her
hanging on the tree of fond expectation for ever. She'll drop.'
'No, it 's because you're not thorough: you 'll fall between the stools.'
'You shook off that fine Welsh girl, and she was in your hand--the act of
a madman!' Jorian continued. 'You're getting older: the day will come
when you're a flat excitement. You know the first Lady Edbury spoilt one
of your best chances when you had the market. Now you're trifling with
the second. She's the head of the Light Brigade, but you might fix her
down, if she's not too much in debt. You 're not at the end of your run,
I dare say. Only, my good Roy, let me tell you, in life you mustn't wait
for the prize of the race till you touch the goal--if you prefer
metaphor. You generally come forward about every seven years or so.
Add on another seven, and women'll begin to think. You can't beat Time,
mon Roy.'
'So,' said my father, 'I touch the goal, and women begin to think, and I
can't beat time to them. Jorian, your mind is in a state of confusion.
I do not marry.'
'Sentiments!'
'Just as I remarked, you are not thorough. You have genius and courage
out of proportion, and you are a dead failure, Roy; because, no sooner
have you got all Covent Garden before you for the fourth or fifth time,
than in go your hands into your pockets, and you say--No, there's an
apple I can't have, so I'll none of these; and, by the way, the apple
must be tolerably withered by this time. And you know perfectly well
(for you don't lack common sense at a shaking, Roy Richmond), that you're
guilty of simple madness in refusing to make the best of your situation.
You haven't to be taught what money means. With money--and a wife to
take care of it, mind you--you are pre-eminently the man for which you
want to be recognized. Without it--Harry 'll excuse me, I must speak
plainly--you're a sort of a spectacle of a bob-cherry, down on your luck,
up on your luck, and getting dead stale and never bitten; a familiar
curiosity'
Jorian added, 'Oh, by Jove! it's not nice to think of.' My father said:
'Harry, I am sure, will excuse you for talking, in your extreme
friendliness, of matters that he and I have not--and they interest us
deeply--yet thought fit to discuss. And you may take my word for it,
Jorian, that I will give Alphonse his medical dose. I am quite of your
opinion that the kings of cooks require it occasionally. Harry will
inform us of Mdlle. Chassediane's commands.'
'We will undertake it,' said my father. 'I depute the arrangements to
you, Jorian. Respect the prejudices, and avoid collisions, that is all.'
Captain DeWitt became by convenient stages cheerful, after the pink slip
of paper had been made common property, and from a seriously-advising
friend, in his state of spite, relapsed to the idle and shadow-like
associate, when pleased. I had to thank him for the gift of fresh
perceptions. Surely it would be as well if my father could get a woman
of fortune to take care of him!
'Here you behold the mummy of the villain Love.' Such love as it was--the
love of the privileged butcher for the lamb. The burden of the letters,
put in epigram, was rattlesnake and bird. A narrative of Anastasia's
sister, Elizabeth, signed and sealed, with names of witnesses appended,
related in brief bald English the history of the events which had killed
her. It warmed pathetically when dwelling on the writer's necessity to
part with letters and papers of greater moment, that she might be enabled
to sustain and educate her sister's child. She named the certificate;
she swore to the tampering with witnesses. The number and exact
indication of the house where the ceremony took place was stated--a house
in Soho;--the date was given, and the incident on that night of the rape
of the beautiful Miss Armett by mad Lord Beaumaris at the theatre doors,
aided by masked ruffians, after Anastasia's performance of Zamira.
CHAPTER XL
It happened that the squire came across us as we were rounding the slope
of larch and fir plantation near a part of the Riversley hollows, leading
to the upper heath-land, where, behind a semicircle of birches, Bulsted
lay. He was on horseback, and called hoarsely to the captain's coachman,
who was driving us, to pull up. 'Here, Harry,' he sang out to me, in the
same rough voice, 'I don't see why we should bother Captain William.
It's a bit of business, not pleasure. I've got the book in my pocket.
You ask--is it convenient to step into my bailiff's cottage hard by, and
run through it? Ten minutes 'll tell me all I want to know. I want it
done with. Ask.'
'Better, sir, when I've got rid of a damned unpleasant bit o' business.'
My father alighted from the carriage. The squire cast his gouty leg to
be quit of his horse, but not in time to check my father's advances and
ejaculations of condolence.
His hand and arm were raised in the form of a splint to support the
squire, who glared back over his cheekbone, horrified that he could not
escape the contact, and in too great pain from arthritic throes to
protest: he resembled a burglar surprised by justice. 'What infernal
nonsense . . , fellow talking now?' I heard him mutter between his
hoppings and dancings, with one foot in the stirrup and a toe to earth,
the enemy at his heel, and his inclination half bent upon swinging to the
saddle again.
The squire directed Uberly, acting as his groom, to walk his horse up and
down the turf fronting young Tom Eckerthy's cottage, and me to remain
where I was; then hobbled up to the door, followed at a leisurely march
by my father. The door opened. My father swept the old man in before
him, with a bow and flourish that admitted of no contradiction, and the
door closed on them. I caught a glimpse of Uberly screwing his wrinkles
in a queer grimace, while he worked his left eye and thumb expressively
at the cottage, by way of communicating his mind to Samuel, Captain
Bulsted's coachman; and I became quite of his opinion as to the nature of
the meeting, that it was comical and not likely to lead to much. I
thought of the princess and of my hope of her depending upon such an
interview as this. From that hour when I stepped on the sands of the
Continent to the day of my quitting them, I had been folded in a dream:
I had stretched my hands to the highest things of earth, and here now was
the retributive material money-question, like a keen scythe-blade!
Mounting the heaths, we looked back on the long yellow road, where the
carriage conveying my father to the railway-station was visible, and
talked of him, and of the elements of antique tragedy in his history,
which were at that period, let me say, precisely what my incessant mental
efforts were strained to expel from the idea of our human life. The
individual's freedom was my tenet of faith; but pity pleaded for him that
he was well-nigh irresponsible, was shamefully sinned against at his
birth, one who could charge the Gods with vindictiveness, and complain of
the persecution of natal Furies. My aunt Dorothy advised me to take him
under my charge, and sell his house and furniture, make him live in
bachelor chambers with his faithful waiting-woman and a single
manservant.
She murmured, 'Is there not some annual income paid to him?'
Her quick delicacy made her redden in alluding so closely to his personal
affairs, and I loved her for the nice feeling. 'It was not much,' I
said. The miserable attempt to repair the wrongs done to him with this
small annuity angered me--and I remembered, little pleased, the foolish
expectations he founded on this secret acknowledgement of the justice of
his claims. 'We won't talk of it,' I pursued. 'I wish he had never
touched it. I shall interdict him.'
'You would let him pay his debts with it, Harry?'
'I am not sure, aunty, that he does not incur a greater debt by accepting
it.'
'One's wish would be, that he might not ever be in need of it.'
CHAPTER XLI
'Take care it's not another name for tradesmen's Balls, William.'
The captain was very angry. 'What,' said he, turning to us, 'what does
the squire mean by telling an officer of the Royal Navy that he is
conducting his wife to a tradesmen's Ball?'
Julia threatened malicious doings for the insult. She and the squire had
a controversy upon the explication of the word gentleman, she describing
my father's appearance and manners to the life. 'Now listen to me,
squire. A gentleman, I say, is one you'd say, if he wasn't born a duke,
he ought to have been, and more shame to the title! He turns the key of
a lady's heart with a twinkle of his eye. He 's never mean--what he has
is yours. He's a true friend; and if he doesn't keep his word, you know
in a jiffy it's the fault of affairs; and stands about five feet eleven:
he's a full-blown man': and so forth.
'Ay, sir; well,' returned the captain, to whom this kind of fencing in
the dark was an affliction, 'we make it up in quality--in quality.'
'I 'll be bound you do,' said the squire; 'and so you will so long as
you 're only asked to dance to the other poor devils' fiddling.'
'Why, ma'am, you might keep from swearing,' the squire bawled.
'La! squire,' said she, 'why, don't you know the National Anthem?'
'And where's my last word, if you please?' Julia jumped up, and dropped a
provoking curtsey.
'You silly old grandada!' said Janet, going round to him; 'don't you see
the cunning woman wants to dress you in our garments, and means to boast
of it to us while you're finishing your wine?'
The old man fondled her. I could have done the same, she bent over him
with such homely sweetness. 'One comfort, you won't go to these
gingerbread Balls,' he said.
'No; nor shan't be, while I can keep you out of bad company.'
'You don't want more than one at a time, eh?' He corrected his error:
'No, the fellow's engaged in another quadrille. Mind you, Miss Janet,
he shall dance to your tune yet. D' ye hear, sir?' The irritation
excited by Captain Bulsted and Julia broke out in fury. 'Who's that
fellow danced when Rome was burning?'
'The Emperor Nero,' said Janet. 'He killed Harry's friend Seneca in the
eighty-somethingth year of his age; an old man, and--hush, grandada!'
She could not check him.
'Hark you, Mr. Harry; dance your hardest up in town with your rips and
reps, and the lot of ye; all very fine while the burning goes on: you
won't see the fun of dancing on the ashes. A nice king of Rome Nero was
next morning! By the Lord, if I couldn't swear you'll be down on your
knees to an innocent fresh-hearted girl 's worth five hundred of the crew
you're for partnering now while you've a penny for the piper.'
Janet shut his mouth, kissed him, and held his wine up. He drank, and
thumped the table. 'We 'll have parties here, too. The girl shall have
her choice of partners: she shan't be kept in the background by a young
donkey. Take any six of your own age, and six sensible men, to try you
by your chances. By George, the whole dozen 'd bring you in non-compos.
You've only got the women on your side because of a smart face and
figure.'
'Come, if he has the women on his side,' said Captain Bulsted, mildly.
So saying, I followed the ladies. It was not the wisest of speeches, and
happened, Captain Bulsted informed me, to be delivered in my father's
manner, for the squire pronounced emphatically that he saw very little
Beltham in me. The right course would have been for me to ask him then
and there whether I had his consent to start for Germany. But I was the
sport of resentments and apprehensions; and, indeed, I should not have
gone. I could not go without some title beyond that of the heir of great
riches.
The old man, a martyr to what he considered due to his favourite, endured
the horror of the Ball until suppertime, and kept his eyes on us two. He
forgot, or pretended to forget, my foreign engagement altogether, though
the announcement in the newspapers was spoken of by Sir Roderick and Lady
Echester and others.
'How do you like that?' he remarked to me, seeing her twirled away by one
of the young Rubreys.
'Like it!' said he. 'In my day you wouldn't have caught me letting the
bloom be taken off the girl I cared for by a parcel o' scampish young
dogs. Right in their arms! Look at her build. She's strong; she's
healthy; she goes round like a tower. If you want a girl to look like a
princess!'
His eulogies were not undeserved. But she danced as lightly and happily
with Mr. Fred Rubrey as with Harry Richmond. I congratulated myself on
her lack of sentiment. Later, when in London, where Mlle. Jenny
Chassediane challenged me to perilous sarabandes, I wished that Janet had
ever so small a grain of sentiment, for a preservative to me. Ottilia
glowed high and distant; she sent me no message; her image did not step
between me and disorder. The whole structure of my idea of my superior
nature seemed to be crumbling to fragments; and beginning to feel in
despair that I was wretchedly like other men, I lost by degrees the sense
of my hold on her. It struck me that my worst fears of the effect
produced on the princess's mind by that last scene in the lake-palace
must be true, and I abandoned hope. Temple thought she tried me too
cruelly. Under these circumstances I became less and less resolutely
disposed to renew the forlorn conflict with my father concerning his
prodigal way of living. 'Let it last as long as I have a penny to
support him!' I exclaimed. He said that Dettermain and Newson were now
urging on his case with the utmost despatch in order to keep pace with
him, but that the case relied for its life on his preserving a great
appearance. He handed me his division of our twin cheque-books, telling
me he preferred to depend on his son for supplies, and I was in the mood
to think this a partial security.
'On the contrary, I will accept nothing but minor sums--so to speak, the
fractional shillings; though I confess I am always bewildered by silver,'
said he.
'My tradesmen are not like the tradesmen of other persons,' he broke out
with a curious neigh of supreme satisfaction in that retinue. 'They
believe in me. I have de facto harnessed them to my fortunes; and if you
doubt me on the point of success, I refer you to Dettermain and Newson.
All I stipulate for is to maintain my position in society to throw a
lustre on my Case. So much I must do. My failures hitherto have been
entirely owing to the fact that I had not my son to stand by me.'
'Yes, money.'
'I admit the necessity for it, my son. Say you hand me a cheque for a
temporary thousand. Your credit and mine in conjunction can replace it
before the expiration of the two months. Or,' he meditated, 'it might be
better to give a bond or so to a professional lender, and preserve the
account at your bankers intact. The truth is, I have, in my interview
with the squire, drawn in advance upon the, material success I have a
perfect justification to anticipate, and I cannot allow the old gentleman
to suppose that I retrench for the purpose of giving a large array of
figures to your bankers' book. It would be sheer madness. I cannot do
it. I cannot afford to do it. When you are on a runaway horse, I prefer
to say a racehorse,--Richie, you must ride him. You dare not throw up
the reins. Only last night Wedderburn, appealing to Loftus, a practical
sailor, was approved when he offered--I forget the subject-matter--the
illustration of a ship on a lee-shore; you are lost if you do not spread
every inch of canvas to the gale. Retrenchment at this particular moment
is perdition. Count our gains, Richie. We have won a princess . . .'
He persisted: 'Half a minute. She is won; she is ours. And let me, in
passing,--bear with me one second--counsel you to write to Prince Ernest
instanter, proposing formally for his daughter, and, in your
grandfather's name, state her dowry at fifty thousand per annum.'
'No, Richie, I do not forget that you are off a leeshore; you are mounted
on a skittish racehorse, with, if you like, a New Forest fly operating
within an inch of his belly-girths. Our situation is so far ticklish,
and prompts invention and audacity.'
'You must forget, sir, that in the present state of the squire's mind, I
should be simply lying in writing to the prince that he offers a dowry.'
'Why not marry an Englishwoman? Rich young men ought to choose wives
from their own people, out of their own sets. Foreign women never get on
well in this country, unless they join the hounds to hunt the husband.'
She cited naturalized ladies famous for the pastime. Her world and its
outskirts she knew thoroughly, even to the fact of my grandfather's
desire that I should marry Janet Ilchester. She named a duke's daughter,
an earl's. Of course I should have to stop the scandal: otherwise the
choice I had was unrestricted. My father she evidently disliked, but she
just as much disliked an encounter with his invincible bonhomie and
dexterous tongue. She hinted at family reasons for being shy of him,
assuring me that I was not implicated in them.
'The Guelph pattern was never much to my taste,' she said, and it
consoled me with the thought that he was not ranked as an adventurer in
the houses he entered. I learned that he was supposed to depend chiefly
on my vast resources. Edbury acted the part of informant to the
inquisitive harridan: 'Her poor dear good-for-nothing Edbury! whose only
cure would be a nice, well-conducted girl, an heiress.' She had cast her
eye on Anna Penrhys, but considered her antecedents doubtful. Spotless
innocence was the sole receipt for Edbury's malady. My father, in a fit
of bold irony, proposed Lady Kane for President of his Tattle and Scandal
Club,--a club of ladies dotted with select gentlemen, the idea of which
Jorian DeWitt claimed the merit of starting, and my father surrendered it
to him, with the reservation, that Jorian intended an association of
backbiters pledged to reveal all they knew, whereas the Club, in its
present form, was an engine of morality and decency, and a social
safeguard, as well as an amusement. It comprised a Committee of
Investigation, and a Court of Appeal; its object was to arraign slander.
Lady Kane declined the honour. 'I am not a washerwoman,' she said to me,
and spoke of where dirty linen should be washed, and was distressingly
broad in her innuendoes concerning Edbury's stepmother. This Club sat
and became a terror for a month, adding something to my father's
reputation. His inexhaustible conversational art and humour gave it such
vitality as it had. Ladies of any age might apply for admission when
well seconded: gentlemen under forty-five years were rigidly excluded,
and the seniors must also have passed through the marriage ceremony.
Outside tattle and scandal declared, that the Club was originated to
serve as a club for Lady Edbury, but I chose to have no opinion upon what
I knew nothing of.
These matters were all ephemeral, and freaks; they produced, however,
somewhat of the same effect on me as on my father, in persuading me that
he was born for the sphere he occupied, and rendering me rather callous
as to the sources of ways and means. I put my name to a bond for several
thousand pounds, in conjunction with Lord Edbury, thinking my father
right in wishing to keep my cheque-book unworried, lest the squire should
be seized with a spasm of curiosity before the two months were over.
'I promise you I surprise him,' my father said repeatedly. He did not
say how: I had the suspicion that he did not know. His confidence and my
growing recklessness acted in unison.
She built them up piecemeal: 'The company! the dresses! the band! the
supper!' The host was a personage supernatural. 'Aladdin's magician, if
you like,' said Julia, 'only-good! A perfect gentleman! and I'll say
again, confound his enemies.' She presumed, as she was aware she might
do, upon the squire's prepossession in her favour, without reckoning that
I was always the victim.
'A Dauphin?' quoth Captain Bulsted. 'I don't know the fish.'
I had not.
'But I tell ye there is a Dauphin mixed up with him. A Dauphin and Mr.
Ik Dine!'
'Ay, that's German lingo, William, and you ought to know it if you're a
loyal sailor--means "I serve."'
'Mr. Beltham,' said the captain, seriously, 'I give you my word of honour
as a man and a British officer, I don't understand one syllable of what
you're saying; but if it means any insinuation against the gentleman who
condescends to extend his hospitalities to my wife and me, I must, with
regret, quit the place where I have had the misfortune to hear it.'
'You stop where you are, William,' the squire motioned to him. 'Gad, I
shall have to padlock my mouth, or I shan't have a friend left soon . .
. confounded fellow. . . I tell you they call him Mr. Ik Dine in town.
Ik Dine and a Dauphin! They made a regular clown and pantaloon o' the
pair, I'm told. Couple o' pretenders to Thrones invited to dine together
and talk over their chances and show their private marks. Oho! by-and-
by, William! You and I! Never a man made such a fool of in his life!'
'You are speaking in the presence of his son, sir, and you are trying the
young gentleman's affection for you hard.'
'Eh? 'Cause I'm his friend? Harry,' my grandfather faced round on me,
'don't you know I 'm the friend you can trust? Hal, did I ever borrow a
farthing of you? Didn't I, the day of your majority, hand you the whole
of your inheritance from your poor broken-hearted mother, with interest,
and treat you like a man? And never played spy, never made an inquiry,
till I heard the scamp had been fastening on you like a blood-sucker, and
singing hymns into the ears of that squeamish dolt of a pipe-smoking
parson, Peterborough--never thought of doing it! Am I the man that
dragged your grandmother's name through the streets and soiled yours?'
Captain Bulsted reached me his hand. 'You have a great deal to bear,
Harry. I commend you, my boy, for taking it manfully.'
'I say no more,' quoth the squire. 'But what I said was true. The
fellow gives his little dinners and suppers to his marchionesses,
countesses, duchesses, and plays clown and pantaloon among the men. He
thinks a parcel o' broidered petticoats 'll float him. So they may till
a tradesman sent stark mad pops a pin into him. Harry, I'd as lief hang
on to a fire-ship. Here's Ilchester tells me . . . and Ilchester
speaks of him under his breath now as if he were sitting in a pew funking
the parson. Confound the fellow! I say he's guilty of treason. Pooh!
who cares! He cuts out the dandies of his day, does he? He's past
sixty, if he's a month. It's all damned harlequinade. Let him twirl off
one columbine or another, or a dozen, and then--the last of him! Fellow
makes the world look like a farce. He 's got about eight feet by five to
caper on, and all London gaping at him--geese! Are you a gentleman and a
man of sense, Harry Richmond, to let yourself be lugged about in public--
by the Lord! like a pair of street-tumblers in spangled haunch-bags,
father and boy, on a patch of carpet, and a drum banging, and tossed and
turned inside out, and my God! the ass of a fellow strutting the ring
with you on his shoulder! That's the spectacle. And you, Harry, now
I 'll ask you, do you mean your wife--egad, it'd be a pretty scene, with
your princess in hip-up petticoats, stiff as bottle-funnel top down'ards,
airing a whole leg, and knuckling a tambourine!'
'Not crying, my dear lad?' Captain Bulsted put his arm round me kindly,
and tried to catch a glimpse of my face. I let him see I was not going
through that process. 'Whew!' said he, 'and enough to make any Christian
sweat! You're in a bath, Harry. I wouldn't expect the man who murdered
his godmother for one shilling and fivepence three-farthings the other
day, to take such a slinging, and think he deserved it.'
'You tell me, sir, you had this brutal story from the Lord-Lieutenant of
the county?'
'Ay, from Lord Shale. But I won't have you going to him and betraying
our connection with a--'
'Halloo !' Captain Bulsted sang out to his wife on the lawn. 'And now,
squire, I have had my dose. And you will permit me to observe, that I
find it emphatically what we used to call at school black-jack.'
'We did not arrive at that opinion, sir. Harry, your arm. An hour with
the ladies will do us both good. The squire,' he murmured, wiping his
forehead as he went out, 'has a knack of bringing us into close proximity
with hell-fire when he pleases.'
Julia screamed on beholding us, 'Aren't you two men as pale as death!'
Janet came and looked. 'Merely a dose,' said the captain. 'We are
anxious to play battledore and shuttlecock madly.'
'So he shall, the dear!' Julia caressed him. 'We'll all have a
tournament in the wet-weather shed.'
She hailed Julia to run and fetch the battledores, and then told me she
had been obliged to confiscate the newspapers that morning and cast the
burden on post-office negligence. 'They reach grandada's hands by
afternoon post, Harry, and he finds objectionable passages blotted or cut
out; and as long as the scissors don't touch the business columns and the
debates, he never asks me what I have been doing. He thinks I keep a
scrap-book. I haven't often time in the morning to run an eye all over
the paper. This morning it was the first thing I saw.'
What had she seen? She led me out of view of the windows and showed me.
Janet and I, side by side with the captain and Julia, carried on the game
of battledore and shuttlecock, in a match to see whether the unmarried
could keep the shuttle flying as long as the married, with varying
fortunes. She gazed on me, to give me the comfort of her sympathy, too
much, and I was too intent on the vision of my father either persecuted
by lies or guilty of hideous follies, to allow the match to be a fair
one. So Julia could inform the squire that she and William had given the
unmarried pair a handsome beating, when he appeared peeping round one of
the shed-pillars.
'Of course you beat 'em,' said the squire. 'It 's not my girl's fault.'
He said more, to the old tune, which drove Janet away.
I remembered, when back in the London vortex, the curious soft beauty she
won from casting up her eyes to watch the descending feathers, and the
brilliant direct beam of those thick-browed, firm, clear eyes, with her
frown, and her set lips and brave figure, when she was in the act of
striking to keep up a regular quick fusilade. I had need of calm
memories. The town was astir, and humming with one name.
CHAPTER XLII
I passed from man to man, hearing hints and hesitations, alarming half-
remarks, presumed to be addressed to one who could supply the remainder,
and deduce consequences. There was a clearer atmosphere in the street of
Clubs. Jennings was the first of my father's more intimate acquaintances
to meet me frankly. He spoke, though not with great seriousness, of the
rumour of a possible prosecution. Sir Weeton Slater tripped up to us
with a mixed air of solicitude and restraint, asked whether I was well,
and whether I had seen the newspapers that morning; and on my informing
him that I had just come up from Riversley, on account of certain
rumours, advised me to remain in town strictly for the present. He also
hinted at rumours of prosecutions. 'The fact is----' he began several
times, rendered discreet, I suppose, by my juvenility, fierte, and
reputed wealth.
We were joined by Admiral Loftus and Lord Alton. They queried and
counterqueried as to passages between my father and the newspapers, my
father and the committee of his Club, preserving sufficient consideration
for me to avoid the serious matter in all but distant allusions; a point
upon which the breeding of Mr. Serjeant Wedderburn was not so accurate a
guide to him. An exciting public scandal soon gathers knots of gossips
in Clubland. We saw Wedderburn break from a group some way down the
pavement and pick up a fresh crumb of amusement at one of the doorsteps.
'Roy Richmond is having his benefit to-day!' he said, and repeated this
and that, half audible to me. For the rest, he pooh-poohed the idea of
the Law intervening. His 'How d' ye do, Mr. Richmond, how d' ye do?' was
almost congratulatory. 'I think we meet at your father's table to-night?
It won't be in the Tower, take my word for it. Oh! the papers! There's
no Act to compel a man to deny what appears in the papers. No such luck
as the Tower!--though Littlepitt (Mr. Wedderburn's nickname for our
Premier) would be fool enough for that. He would. If he could turn
attention from his Bill, he'd do it. We should have to dine off Boleyn's
block:--coquite horum obsonia he'd say, eh?''
The form of humour to express the speed of the world was common, but it
struck me as a terrible illustration of my father's. I had still a sense
of pleasure in the thought that these intimates of his were gentlemen who
relished and, perhaps, really liked him. They were not parasites; not
the kind of men found hanging about vulgar profligates.
I quitted them. Sir Weeton Slater walked half-a-dozen steps beside me.
'May I presume on a friendly acquaintance with your father, Mr.
Richmond?' he said. 'The fact is--you will not be offended?--he is apt
to lose his head, unless the Committee of Supply limits him very
precisely. I am aware that there is no material necessity for any
restriction.' He nodded to me as to one of the marvellously endowed, as
who should say, the Gods presided at your birth. The worthy baronet
struggled to impart his meaning, which was, that he would have me define
something like an allowance to my father, not so much for the purpose of
curtailing his expenditure--he did not venture upon private ground--as to
bridle my father's ideas of things possible for a private gentleman in
this country. In that character none were like him. As to his suit, or
appeal, he could assure me that Serjeant Wedderburn, and all who would or
could speak on the subject, saw no prospect of success; not any. The
worst of it was, that it caused my father to commit himself in sundry
ways. It gave a handle to his enemies. It--he glanced at me
indicatively.
'It led him to perform once more as a Statue of Bronze before the whole
of gaping London!' I could have added. That scene on the pine-promontory
arose in my vision, followed by other scenes of the happy German days.
I had no power to conjure up the princess.
Jorian DeWitt was the man I wanted to see. After applications at his
Club and lodgings I found him dragging his Burgundy leg in the Park,
on his road to pay a morning visit to his fair French enchantress.
I impeached him, and he pleaded guilty, clearly not wishing to take me
with him, nor would he give me Mlle. Jenny's address, which I had. By
virtue of the threat that I would accompany him if he did not satisfy me,
I managed to extract the story of the Dauphin, aghast at the discovery of
its being true. The fatal after-dinner speech he believed to have been
actually spoken, and he touched on that first. 'A trap was laid for him,
Harry Richmond; and a deuced clever trap it was. They smuggled in
special reporters. There wasn't a bit of necessity for the toast.
But the old vixen has shown her hand, so now he must fight. He can beat
her single-handed on settees. He'll find her a tartar at long bowls: she
sticks at nothing. She blazes out, that he scandalizes her family. She
has a dozen indictments against him. You must stop in town and keep
watch. There's fire in my leg to explode a powder-magazine a mile off!'
'Lady Dane,' said Jorian. 'She set Edbury on to face him with the
Dauphin. You don't fancy it came of the young dog "all of himself,"
do you? Why, it was clever! He trots about a briefless little
barrister, a scribbler, devilish clever and impudent, who does his farces
for him. Tenby 's the fellow's name, and it's the only thing I haven't
heard him pun on. Puns are the smallpox of the language;--we're cursed
with an epidemic. By gad, the next time I meet him I 'll roar out for
vaccine matter.'
She wanted me to take a seat beside her, she had so much to say. Was
there not some funny story abroad of a Pretender to the Throne of France?
she asked, wrinkling her crow'sfeet eyelids to peer at me, and wished to
have the particulars. I had none to offer. 'Ah! well,' said she; 'you
stay in London? Come and see me. I'm sure you 're sensible. You and I
can put our heads together. He's too often in Courtenay Square, and he's
ten years too young for that, still. He ought to have good advice. Tell
me, how can a woman who can't guide herself help a man?--and the most
difficult man alive! I'm sure you understand me. I can't drive out in
the afternoon for them. They make a crush here, and a clatter of
tongues! . . . That's my private grievance. But he's now keeping
persons away who have the first social claim . . . I know they can't
appear. Don't look confused; no one accuses you. Only I do say it 's
getting terribly hot in London for somebody. Call on me. Will you?'
'I do wish he'd throw it up,' Temple exclaimed. 'It makes him enemies.
And just examining it, you see he could get no earthly good out of it: he
might as well try to scale a perpendicular rock. But when I'm with him,
I'm ready to fancy what he pleases--I acknowledge that. He has excess of
phosphorus, or he's ultra-electrical; doctors could tell us better than
lawyers.' Temple spoke of the clever young barrister Tenby as the man
whom his father had heard laughing over the trick played upon 'Roy
Richmond.' I conceived that I might furnish Mr. Tenby a livelier kind of
amusement, and the thought that I had once been sur le terrain, and had
bitterly regretted it, by no means deterred me from the idea of a second
expedition, so black was my mood. A review of the circumstances, aided
by what reached my ears before the night went over, convinced me that
Edbury was my man. His subordinate helped him to the instrument, and
possibly to the plot, but Edbury was the capital offender.
The scene of the prank was not in itself so bad as the stuff which a
cunning anecdotist could make out of it. Edbury invited my father to a
dinner at a celebrated City tavern. He kept his guests (Jennings, Jorian
DeWitt, Alton, Wedderburn, were among the few I was acquainted with who
were present) awaiting the arrival of a person for whom he professed
extraordinary respect. The Dauphin of France was announced. A mild,
flabby, amiable-looking old person, with shelving forehead and grey
locks--excellently built for the object, Jorian said--entered. The Capet
head and embonpoint were there. As far as a personal resemblance might
go, his pretensions to be the long-lost Dauphin were grotesquely
convincing, for, notwithstanding the accurate picture of the Family
presented by him, the man was a pattern bourgeois:--a sturdy impostor,
one would have thought, and I thought so when I heard of him; but I have
been assured that he had actually grown old in the delusion that he,
carrying on his business in the City of London, was the identical
Dauphin.
Edbury played his part by leading his poor old victim half way to meet
his other most honoured guest, hesitating then and craving counsel
whether he was right in etiquette to advance the Dauphin so far. The
Dauphin left him mildly to decide the point: he was eminently mild
throughout, and seems to have thought himself in good faith surrounded by
believers and adherents. Edbury's task soon grew too delicate for that
coarse boy. In my father's dexterous hands he at once lost his
assumption of the gallantry of manner which could alone help him to
retain his advantage. When the wine was in him he began to bawl. I
could imagine the sort of dialogue he raised. Bets on the Dauphin, bets
on Roy: they were matched as on a racecourse. The Dauphin remembered
incidents of his residence in the Temple, with a beautiful juvenile
faintness: a conscientious angling for recollection, Wedderburn said.
Roy was requested to remember something, to drink and refresh his memory
infantine incidents were suggested. He fenced the treacherous host
during dinner with superb complacency.
Conceive a monomaniacal obese old English citizen, given to lift hand and
eye and address the cornices, claiming to be an Illustrious Boy, and
calling on a beautiful historic mother and unfortunate Royal sire to
attest it! No wonder the table was shaken with laughter. He appealed to
Tenby constantly, as to the one man he knew in the room. Tenby it was
who made the discovery of him somewhere in the City, where he earned his
livelihood either as a corn-merchant; or a stockbroker, or a chronometer-
maker, or a drysalter, and was always willing to gratify a customer with
the sight of his proofs of identity. Mr. Tenby made it his business to
push his clamorous waggishness for the exhibition. I could readily
believe that my father was more than his match in disposable sallies and
weight of humour, and that he shielded the old creature successfully, so
long as he had a tractable being to protect. But the Dauphin was plied
with wine, and the marquis had his fun. Proof upon proof in verification
of his claims was proffered by the now-tremulous son of St. Louis--so he
called himself. With, Jorian admitted, a real courtly dignity, he stood
up and proposed to lead the way to any neighbouring cabinet to show the
spots on his person; living witnesses to the truth of his allegations,
he declared them to be. The squire had authority for his broad farce,
except in so far as he mixed up my father in the swinery of it.
I grew more and more convinced that my father never could have lost his
presence of mind when he found himself in the net of a plot to cover him
with ridicule. He was the only one who did not retire to the Dauphin's
'chamber of testification,' to return convulsed with vinous laughter
after gravely inspecting the evidence; for which abstention the Dauphin
reproached him violently, in round terms of abuse, challengeing him to go
through a similar process. This was the signal for Edbury, Tenby, and
some of the rest. They formed a circle, one-half for the Dauphin, one
for Roy. How long the boorish fun lasted, and what exactly came of it,
I did not hear. Jorian DeWitt said my father lost his temper, a point
contested by Wedderburn and Jennings, for it was unknown of him. Anyhow,
he thundered to some effect, inasmuch as he detached those that had
gentlemanly feelings from the wanton roysterers, and next day the latter
pleaded wine. But they told the story, not without embellishments. The
world followed their example.
'I think there was a hoarse whisper audible up to the Judge's seat at
intervals,' said Mr. Temple.
'The Bar cannot confess to obligations from those who don't wear the
robe,' Temple rejoined.
His father advised me to read for the Bar, as a piece of very good
training.
Temple grimaced and his father nodded. Still it struck me that I might
one day have the felicity of quiet hours to sit down with Temple and read
Law--far behind him in the race. And he envied me, in his friendly
manner, I knew. My ambition had been blown to tatters.
A new day dawned. The household rose and met at the breakfast-table,
devoid of any dread of the morning newspapers. Their talk was like the
chirrup of birds. Temple and his father walked away together to
chambers, bent upon actual business--upon doing something! I reflected
emphatically, and compared them to ships with rudders, while I was at the
mercy of wind, tide, and wave. I called at Dettermain and Newson's, and
heard there of a discovery of a witness essential to the case, either in
North Wales or in New South. I did not, as I had intended, put a veto on
their proceedings. The thing to do was to see my father, and cut the
case at the fountain head. For this purpose, it was imperative that I
should go to him, and prepare myself for the interview by looking at the
newspapers first. I bought one, hastily running my eyes down the columns
in the shop. His name was printed, but merely in a fashionable
notification that carriages took up and set down for his costume Ball,
according to certain regulations. The relief of comparative obscurity
helped me to breathe freely: not to be laughed at, was a gain. I was
rather inclined to laud his courage in entering assembly-rooms, where he
must be aware that he would see the Dauphin on every face. Perhaps he
was guilty of some new extravagance last night, too late for scandal to
reinforce the reporters!
Mrs. Waddy had a woeful visage when informing me that he was out, gone to
Courtenay Square. She ventured a murmur of bills coming in. Like
everybody else, she fancied he drew his supplies from my inexhaustible
purse; she hoped the bills would be paid off immediately: the servants'
wages were overdue. 'Never can I get him to attend to small accounts,'
she whimpered, and was so ready to cry outright, that I said, 'Tusk,' and
with the one word gave her comfort. 'Of course, you, Mr. Harry, can
settle them, I know that.' We were drawing near to poor old Sewis's
legacy, even for the settling of the small accounts!
'Compendious larks!' cried he, in the slang of his dog's day. 'I say;
you're one at Duke Fitz's masquerade to-night? Tell us your toggery.
Hang it, you might go for the Black Prince. I'm Prince Hal. Got a
headache? Come to my Club and try my mixture. Yoicks! it'd make
Methuselah and Melchisedec jump up and have a twirl and a fandango. I
say, you're thick with that little French actress Chastedian jolly little
woman! too much to say for herself to suit me.'
I found him waiting for me on the steps of his Club, puffing a cigar with
all his vigour, in the classic attitude of a trumpeter. My first words
were: 'I think I have to accuse you of insulting me.'
What the deuce have you got into your head? Come in and smoke.'
The mention of his dinner and the Dauphin crazed him with laughter.
He begged me as a man to imagine the scene: the old Bloated Bourbon of
London Wall and Camberwell! an Illustrious Boy!--drank like a fish!--
ready to show himself to the waiters! And then with 'Gee' and 'Gaw,' the
marquis spouted out reminiscences of scene, the best ever witnessed!
'Up starts the Dauphin. "Damn you, sir! and damn me, sir, if believe
you have a spot on your whole body!" And snuffles and puffs--you should
have been there Richmond, I wrote to ask you: did, upon my life! wanted
you there. Lord! why, you won't get such fun in a century. And old
Roy! he behaved uncommonly finely: said capital things, by Jove! Never
saw him shine so; old trump! Says Dauphin, "My beautiful mother had a
longing for strawberries out of season. I am marked with a strawberry,
here." Says Roy: "It is an admirable and roomy site, but as I am not
your enemy, sir, I doubt if I shall often have the opportunity to behold
it." Ha! ha!--gee! Richmond, you've missed the deucedest good scene
ever acted.'
How could I, after having had an adversary like Prince Otto, call upon a
fellow such as Edbury to give me reason for his conduct? He rollicked
and laughed until my ungovernable impatience brought him to his senses.
'Dash it, you're a fire-eater, I know, Richmond. We can't fight in this
country; ain't allowed. And fighting 's infernal folly. By Jove!
If you're going to tumble down every man who enjoys old Roy, you've your
work cut out for you. He's long chalks the best joke out. 'Twixt you
and me, he did return thanks. What does it matter what old Duke Fitz
does? I give him a lift on his ladder with all my heart. He keeps a
capital table. And I'll be hanged if he hasn't got the secret of the
women. How he does it old Roy! If the lords were ladies they'd vote him
premier peer, double quick. And I'll tell you what, Richmond, I'm
thought a devil of a good-tempered fellow for not keeping watch over
Courtenay Square. I don't call it my business to be house dog for a
pretty stepmother. But there's talking and nodding, and oh! leave all
that: come in and smoke, and let me set you up; and I'll shake your hand.
Halloa! I'm hailed.'
A lady, grasping the veil across her face, beckoned her hand from a
closed carriage below. Edbury ran down to her. I caught sight of
ravishing golden locks, reminding me of Mabel Sweetwinter's hair, and
pricking me with a sensation of spite at the sex for their deplorable
madness in the choice of favourites. Edbury called me to come to the
carriage window. I moved slowly, but the carriage wheeled about and
rolled away. I could just see the outline of a head muffled in furs and
lace.
Claret or brandy had done its work on him by the time I encountered him
some hours later, in the Park. Bramham DeWitt, whom I met in the same
neighbourhood, offered me a mount after lunch, advising me to keep near
my father as much as I conveniently could; and he being sure to appear in
the Park, I went, and heard his name to the right and left of me. He was
now, as he said to me once that he should become, 'the tongue of London.'
I could hardly expect to escape from curious scrutiny myself; I was
looked at. Here and there I had to lift my hat and bow. The
stultification of one's feelings and ideas in circumstances which divide
and set them at variance is worse than positive pain. The looks shed on
me were rather flattering, but I knew that in the background I was felt
to be the son of the notorious. Edbury came trotting up to us like a
shaken sack, calling, 'Neigh! any of you seen old Roy?' Bramham DeWitt,
a stiff, fashionable man of fifty, proud of his blood and quick as his
cousin Jorian to resent an impertinence, replied:
"Gad, old gentleman, I've half a mind to ride you down,' said Edbury,
and, espying me, challenged me to a race to run down the fogies.
CHAPTER XLIII
'Then,' said Lika, touching the flame delicately, 'you take the view that
Kesensky is wrong in another thing besides horses.'
I believe he struck on the subject casually: there was nothing for him to
gain or lose in it; and he had a liking for my father.
'Will you avoid Edbury and his like, and protect yourself?' was my form
of stipulation, spoken to counteract his urgency.
He gave no answer beyond a wave of the hand suitable to his princely one-
coloured costume of ruffled lavender silk, and the magnificent leg he
turned to front me. My senses even up to that period were so
impressionable as to be swayed by a rich dress and a grand manner when
circumstances were not too unfavourable. Now they seemed very
favourable, for they offered me an upward path to tread. His appearance
propitiated me less after he had passed through the hands of his man
Tollingby, but I had again surrendered the lead to him. As to the risk
of proceedings being taken against him, he laughed scornfully at the
suggestion. 'They dare not. The more I dare, the less dare they.'
Again I listened to his curious roundabout reasoning, which dragged
humour at its heels like a comical cur, proclaiming itself imposingly,
in spite of the mongrel's barking, to be prudence and common sense.
Could I deny that I owed him gratitude for the things I cherished most?
--for my acquaintance with Ottilia?--for his services in Germany?--for
the prospect of my elevation in England? I could not; and I tried hard
to be recklessly grateful. As to money, he reiterated that he could put
his hand on it to satisfy the squire on the day of accounts: for the
present, we must borrow. His argument upon borrowing--which I knew well,
and wondered that I did not at the outset disperse with a breath of
contempt--gained on me singularly when reviewed under the light of my
immediate interests: it ran thus:--We have a rich or a barren future,
just as we conceive it. The art of generalship in life consists in
gathering your scattered supplies to suit a momentous occasion; and it is
the future which is chiefly in debt to us, and adjures us for its sake to
fight the fight and conquer. That man is vile and fit to be trampled on
who cannot count his future in gold and victory. If, as we find, we are
always in debt to the past, we should determine that the future is in our
debt, and draw on it. Why let our future lie idle while we need succour?
For instance, to-morrow I am to have what saves my reputation in the
battle to-day; shall I not take it at once? The military commander who
acts on that principle overcomes his adversary to a certainty.
'You, Richie, the member for this borough of Chippenden, have won solid
ground. I guarantee it to you. And you go straight from the hustings,
or the first taste of parliamentary benches, to Sarkeld: you take your
grandad's proposition to Prince Ernest: you bring back the prince's
acceptance to the squire. Can you hope to have a princess without a
battle for her?' More and much more in this strain, until--for he could
read me and most human beings swiftly on the surface, notwithstanding the
pressure of his fancifulness--he perceived that talking influenced me far
less than activity, and so after a hurried breakfast and an innocuous
glance at the damp morning papers, we started to the money-lender's, with
Jennings to lend his name. We were in Chippenden close upon the hour my
father had named, bringing to the startled electors the first news of
their member's death.
During the heat of the canvass for votes I received a kind letter from
the squire in reply to one of mine, wherein he congratulated me on my
prospects of success, and wound up: 'Glad to see it announced you are off
with that princess of yours. Show them we are as proud as they are,
Harry, and a fig for the whole foreign lot! Come to Riversley soon, and
be happy.' What did that mean? Heriot likewise said in a letter: 'So
it's over? The proud prince kicks? You will not thank me for telling
you now what you know I think about it.' I appealed to my father.
'Canvass! canvass!' cried he; and he persistently baffled me. It was
from Temple I learnt that on the day of our starting for Chippenden, the
newspapers contained a paragraph in large print flatly denying upon
authority that there was any foundation for the report of an intended
marriage between the Princess of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld and an English
gentleman. Then I remembered how that morning my father had flung the
papers down, complaining of their dampness.
Our difficulty all through the election was to contend with his humour.
The many triumphs it won for him, both in speech and in action, turned at
least the dialectics of the argument against us, and amusing, flattering,
or bewildering, contributed to silence and hold us passive. Political
convictions of his own, I think I may say with truth, he had none. He
would have been just as powerful, after his fashion, on the Tory side,
pleading for Mr. Normanton Hipperdon; more, perhaps: he would have been
more in earnest. His store of political axioms was Tory; but he did
remarkably well, and with no great difficulty, in confuting them to the
wives of voters, to the voters themselves, and at public assemblies. Our
adversary was redoubtable; a promising Opposition member, ousted from his
seat in the North--a handsome man, too, which my father admitted, and
wealthy, being junior partner in a City banking firm. Anna Penrhys knew
him, and treacherously revealed some of the enemy's secrets, notably
concerning what he termed our incorrigible turn for bribery.
'And that means,' my father said, 'that Mr. Hipperdon does not possess
the art of talking to the ladies. I shall try him in repartee on the
hustings. I must contrive to have our Jorian at my elbow.'
My father read out the sentences of this letter with admiring bursts of
indignation at the sarcasms, and an evident idea that I inclined to
jealousy of the force displayed.
'But we must have him,' he said; 'I do not feel myself complete without
Jorian.'
Mademoiselle Chassediane vowed that her own dress was ravishing. She
went attired as a boudoir-shepherdess or demurely-coquettish Sevres-china
Ninette, such of whom Louis Quinze would chuck the chin down the deadly
introductory walks of Versailles. The reason of her desiring to go was
the fatal sin of curiosity, and, therefore, her sex's burden, not hers.
Jorian was a Mousquetaire, with plumes and ruffles prodigious, and a
hen's heart beneath his cock's feathers. 'Pourtant j'y allai. I saw
your great ladies, how they carry themselves when they would amuse
themselves, and, mon Dieu! Paris has done its utmost to grace their
persons, and the length of their robes did the part of Providence in
bestowing height upon them, parceque, vous savez, Monsieur, c'est
extraordinaire comme ils ont les jambes courtes, ces Anglaises!' Our
aristocracy, however, was not so bad in that respect as our bourgeoisie;
yet it was easy to perceive that our female aristocracy, though they
could ride, had never been drilled to walk: 'de belles femmes, oui;
seulement, tenez, je n'admire ni les yeux de vache, ni de souris, ni mime
ceux de verre comme ornement feminin. Avec de l'embonpoint elles font de
l'effet, mais maigre il n'y a aucune illusion possible.'
'Il est comme les Romains,' she said: 'he never despairs of himself.
It is a Jupiter! If he must punish you he confers a dignity in doing it.
Now I comprehend, that with such women as these grandes dames Anglaises
I should have done him harm but for his greatness of soul.'
Some harm, I fancied, must have been done, in spite of his boast to the
contrary. He had to be in London every other night, and there were tales
current of intrigues against him which had their sources from very lofty
regions. But in Chippenden he threw off London, just as lightly as in
London he discarded Chippenden. No symptom of personal discouragement,
or of fatigue, was betrayed in his face. I spoke once of that paragraph
purporting to emanate from Prince Ernest.
'He is confident, Harry; but where can he obtain the money? If your
grandfather sees it invested in your name in Government securities, he
will be satisfied, not otherwise: nothing less will satisfy him; and if
that is not done, he will join you and your father together in his mind;
and as he has hitherto treated one he will treat both. I know him. He
is just, to the extent of his vision; but he will not be able to separate
you. He is aware that your father has not restricted his expenses since
they met; he will say you should have used your influence.'
She insisted on this, until the tears streamed from her eyes, telling me
that my grandfather was the most upright and unsuspicious of men, and
precisely on that account the severest when he thought he had been
deceived. The fair chances of my election did not console her, as it did
me, by dazzling me. She affirmed strongly that she was sure my father
expected success at the election to be equivalent to the promised
restitution of the money, and begged me to warn him that nothing short of
the sum squandered would be deemed sufficient at Riversley. My dear
aunt, good woman though she was, seemed to me to be waxing miserly.
The squire had given her the name of Parsimony; she had vexed him, Janet
told me, by subscribing a miserable sum to a sailors' asylum that he
patronized--a sum he was ashamed to see standing as the gift of a
Beltham; and she had stopped the building of a wing of her village
school-house, designed upon his plan. Altogether, she was fretful and
distressful; she appeared to think that I could have kept my father in
better order. Riversley was hearing new and strange reports of him. But
how could I at Chippenden thwart his proceedings in London? Besides, he
was serving me indefatigably.
'This gentleman is obliging enough to ask me, "How about the Royal Arms?"
If in his extreme consideration he means to indicate my Arms, I will
inform him that they are open to him; he shall find entertainment for man
and beast; so he is doubly assured of a welcome.'
Edbury declined to budge, but the fellows round him edged aside to show
him a mark for my father's finger.
He paused cruelly for Edbury to open his mouth. The young lord looked
confounded, and from that moment behaved becomingly.
'He might have been doing mischief to-morrow,' my father said to me, and
by letting me conceive his adroitness a matter of design, comforted me
with proofs of intelligent power, and made me feel less the melancholy
conjunction of a piece of mechanism and a piece of criticism, which I was
fast growing to be in the contemplation of the agencies leading to honour
in our land. Edbury whipped his four-in-hand to conduct our voters to
the poll. We had to pull hard against Tory interest. It was a sharp,
dubious, hot day--a day of outcries against undue influence and against
bribery--a day of beer and cheers and the insanest of tricks to cheat the
polling-booth. Old John Thresher of Dipwell, and Farmer Eckerthy drove
over to Chippenden to afford me aid and countenance, disconcerting me by
the sight of them, for I associated them with Janet rather than with
Ottilia, and it was to Ottilia that I should have felt myself rising when
the figures increased their pace in my favour, and the yeasty mob
surrounding my father's superb four-horsed chariot responded to his
orations by proclaiming me victor.
'I congratulate you, Mr. Richmond,' Dettermain said. 'Up to this day I
have had my fears that we should haul more moonshine than fish in our
net. Your father has accomplished prodigies.'
My father, with the bloom of success on his face, led me aside soon after
a safe majority of upwards of seventy had been officially announced.
'Now, Richie,' said he, 'you are a Member. Now to the squire away!
Thank the multitude and off, and as quick to Sarkeld as you well can, and
tell the squire from me that I pardon his suspicions. I have landed you
a Member--that will satisfy him. I am willing, tell him . . . you
know me competent to direct mines . . . bailiff of his estates--
whatever he pleases, to effect a reconciliation. I must be in London to-
night--I am in the thick of the fray there. No matter: go, my son.'
He embraced me. It was not a moment for me to catechize him, though I
could see that he was utterly deluded.
Between moonlight and morning, riding with Temple and Captain Bulsted on
either side of me, I drew rein under the red Grange windows, tired, and
in love with its air of sleepy grandeur. Janet's window was open. I
hailed her. 'Has he won?' she sang out in the dark of her room, as
though the cry of delight came upon the leap from bed. She was dressed.
She had commissioned Farmer Eckerthy to bring her the news at any hour of
the night. Seeing me, she clapped hands. 'Harry, I congratulate you a
thousand times.' She had wit to guess that I should never have thought
of coming had I not been the winner. I could just discern the curve and
roll of her famed thick brown hair in the happy shrug of her shoulder,
and imagined the full stream of it as she leaned out of window to talk to
us.
Janet herself, unfastened the hall-door bolts. She caressed the horses,
feverishly exulting, with charming subdued laughter of victory and
welcome, and amused us by leading my horse round to stables, and
whistling for one of the lads, playing what may, now and then, be a
pretty feature in a young woman of character--the fair tom-boy girl.
She and her maid prepared coffee and toast for us, and entered the hall,
one after the other, laden with dishes of cold meat; and not until the
captain had eaten well did she tell him slyly that somebody, whom she had
brought to Riversley yesterday, was abed and asleep upstairs. The
slyness and its sisterly innocence lit up our eyes, and our hearts
laughed. Her cheeks were deliciously overcoloured. We stole I know not
what from the night and the day, and conventional circumstances, and
rallied Captain Bulsted, and behaved as decorous people who treat the
night properly, and live by rule, do not quite do. Never since Janet was
a girl had I seen her so spirited and responsive: the womanly armour of
half-reserve was put away. We chatted with a fresh-hearted natural young
creature who forfeited not a particle of her ladyship while she made
herself our comrade in talk and frolic.
Janet and I walked part of the way to the station with Temple, who had to
catch an early train, and returning--the song of skylarks covering us--
joined hands, having our choice between nothing to say, and the excess;
perilous both.
CHAPTER XLIV
Now Jorian DeWitt had affirmed that the wealthy widow Lady Sampleman was
to be had by my father for the asking. Placed as we were, I regarded the
objections to his alliance with her in a mild light. She might lend me
the money to appease the squire; that done, I would speedily repay it.
I admitted, in a letter to my aunt Dorothy, the existing objections: but
the lady had long been enamoured of him, I pleaded, and he was past the
age for passionate affection, and would infallibly be courteous and kind.
She was rich. We might count on her to watch over him carefully.
Of course, with such a wife, he would sink to a secondary social sphere;
was it to be regretted if he did? The letter was a plea for my own
interests, barely veiled.
At the moment of writing it, and moreover when I treated my father with
especial coldness, my heart was far less warm in the contemplation of its
pre-eminent aim than when I was suffering him to endanger it, almost
without a protest. Janet and a peaceful Riversley, and a life of quiet
English distinction, beckoned to me visibly, and not hatefully. The
image of Ottilia conjured up pictures of a sea of shipwrecks, a scene of
immeasurable hopelessness. Still, I strove toward that. My strivings
were against my leanings, and imagining the latter, which involved no
sacrifice of the finer sense of honour, to be in the direction of my
lower nature, I repelled them to preserve a lofty aim that led me through
questionable ways.
His fertile ingenuity spared mine the task of persuading him to postpone
the drive to Lady Sampleman. But that he would have been prompt to go,
at a word from me, and was actually about to go when I entered his house,
I could not question.
The funeral pace of the block of cabs and omnibuses engrossed his
attention. Suddenly the Englishman afforded him an example of the
reserve of impetuosity we may contain. I had seen my aunt Dorothy in a
middle line of cabs coming from the City, and was darting in a twinkling
among wheels and shafts and nodding cab-horse noses to take her hand and
know the meaning of her presence in London. She had family business to
do: she said no more. I mentioned that I had checked my father for a day
or two. She appeared grateful. Her anxiety was extreme that she might
not miss the return train, so I relinquished her hand, commanded the
cabman to hasten, and turned to rescue Eckart--too young and faithful a
collegian not to follow his friend, though it were into the lion's den-
from a terrific entanglement of horseflesh and vehicles brawled over by a
splendid collision of tongues. Secure on the pavement again, Eckart
humbly acknowledged that the English tongue could come out upon
occasions. I did my best to amuse him.
Whether it amused him to see me take my seat in the House of Commons, and
hear a debate in a foreign language, I cannot say; but the only pleasure
of which I was conscious at that period lay in the thought that he or his
father, Baron vom Hof, might some day relate the circumstance at Prince
Ernest's table, and fix in Ottilia's mind the recognition of my having
tried to perform my part of the contract. Beggared myself, and knowing
Prince Hermann to be in Sarkeld, all I hoped for was to show her I had
followed the path she traced. My state was lower: besides misfortune I
now found myself exalted only to feel my profound insignificance.
The society of Eckart prevented me from urging him to puff me up with his
talk as I should have wished, and after I had sent the German to be taken
care of by Mrs. Waddy, I had grown so accustomed to the worldly view of
my position that I was fearing for its stability. Threats of a petition
against me were abroad. Supposing the squire disinherited me, could I
stand? An extraordinary appetite for wealth, a novel appreciation of it
--which was, in truth, a voluntary enlistment into the army of mankind,
and the adoption of its passions--pricked me with an intensity of hope
and dread concerning my dependence on my grandfather. I lay sleepless
all night, tossing from Riversley to Sarkeld, condemned, it seemed, to
marry Janet and gain riches and power by renouncing my hope of the
princess and the glory belonging to her, unless I should within a few
hours obtain a show of figures at my bankers.
'And behold you, Mr. Harry! a knock, a letter from a messenger, and he
conquers Government!' It struck me that the epitome of his life had been
played in a day: I was quite incredulous of downright good fortune. He
had been giving a dinner followed by a concert, and the deafening strains
of the music clashed with my acerb spirit, irritating me excessively.
'Where are those men you spoke of?' I asked her. 'Gone,' she
replied,'gone long ago!'
'Paid?' said I.
She was afraid to be precise, but repeated that they were long since
gone.
I singled Jorian DeWitt from among the crowd of loungers on the stairs
and landing between the drawing-rooms. 'Oh, yes, Government has struck
its flag to him,' Jorian said. 'Why weren't you here to dine? Alphonse
will never beat his achievement of to-day. Jenny and Carigny gave us a
quarter-of-an-hour before dinner--a capital idea!--"VEUVE ET BACHELIER."
As if by inspiration. No preparation for it, no formal taking of seats.
It seized amazingly--floated small talk over the soup beautifully.'
'Oh, dear, yes; there can't be a doubt about it,' he answered, airily.
'Roy Richmond has won his game.'
Two or three urgent men round a great gentleman were extracting his
affable approbation of the admirable nature of the experiment of the
Chassediane before dinner. I saw that Eckart was comfortably seated, and
telling Jorian to provide for him in the matter of tobacco, I went to my
room, confused beyond power of thought by the sensible command of fortune
my father, fortune's sport at times, seemed really to have.
I insisted: 'But how, and in what manner has this money been paid?' The
idea struck me that he had succeeded in borrowing it.
'Absurd!' I cried: 'it can't have come from the quarter you suspect.'
'But what was the stipulation you presume was implied?' said I.
'Do you know the whole of his history?' said she. Possibly one of the
dozen unknown episodes in it might have furnished the clue, I agreed with
her.
'Now that you have the money, pray,' St. Parsimony wrote,--'pray be
careful of it. Do not let it be encroached on. Remember it is to serve
one purpose. It should be guarded strictly against every appeal for
aid,' etc., with much underlining.
My grandfather returned the papers. His letter said 'I shall not break
my word. Please to come and see me before you take steps right or left.'